Political Science Department is one of the pioneer Departments of the Federal University Lokoja at its take-off in the 2012/2013 Academic Session. It started under the leadership of Professor Ovwasa Onovwakponoko Lucky, then Associate Professor of Political Science who was assisted by a team of 9 efficient teaching and 2 non- teaching staff members to take care of the pioneer students. Currently the Department boasts of 13 academic staff and 4 non-academic staff. The Department which is located in the Faculty of Arts and Social sciences has a student population of 157 full-time undergraduate students.

Breakdown of students in the Department:

100 Level		200 Level		300 Level		400 Level
Male	34	Male	39	Male	41	Male
Female	14	Female	7	Female	22	Female
Total	48	Total	46	Total	63	Total

The mission of the Department of Political science Federal University Lokoja is to excel in the dissemination of knowledge to students, produce teaching and research of increasing quality and bequeath invaluable knowledge to generations, while remaining relevant to the immediate environment, state and the nation.

The vision for the Department of Political Science is to channel human, material and natural resources to promote learning, research and outreach programmes that will help in transforming the environment by touching the lives of those in the immediate catchment area as well as those far beyond.

The B.Sc. Political Science programme at the Federal University Lokoja, Kogi State is grounded in the Philosophy of training and producing graduates equipped with social scientific tools, skills and knowledge to engage with, and be a part and parcel of the process of making and remarking of the Nigerian State and society.  It is also to produce graduates endowed with the capacity to make contributions at both national and international levels, to the enhancement of the prospect for human prosperity and welfare.  The philosophy has four components.

First, the design of the teaching and research elements of the programme gives primacy to the question of the social relevance of political science knowledge and skills and diagnosing Nigeria’s Political and socio-economic problems as well as the resolution of such problems.  To realize this, emphasis is placed on the acquisition of relevant knowledge that can strengthen the capacity of the Nigerian state to design and implement appropriate development policies, while enhancing the capacity of citizens to engage the process and maximize access to public goods for individuals and groups.

Second, the design of the programme consciously seeks to retain and strengthen the tradition of critical inquiry and pedagogy aimed at equipping the students with the skills to understand, analyze and appreciate the threats and opportunities inherent in on-going changes at both domestic and global levels.  Among others, these include: Public sector reform, market reform, resurgence of civil society, emergence of new social movements, the rise of insurgency and identity politics including ethnicity, gender, Islamism and Pentecostalism, globalization, post-cold war re-alignment of social and political forces.  These developments have far-reaching implications for our conventional understanding of the state, the labour market, and state-society relations in general.

The third element of this philosophy is the continued refining of tools, methodologies, perspectives and paradigms to cope with the analysis and understanding of the complex processes of change at both domestic and global levels.  For instance, post-cold war realities have relocated the sites of conflict as intra-state conflicts have become more dominant than the inter-state conflicts of the cold war era.  Similarly, globalization has shaped new understanding of questions of citizenship, and has altered traditional conception of the state as the dominant political actor in the promotion of development and collective welfare.  Consequently, new issues and challenges such as global governance and redistribution of resources, corporate governance, public sector-private sector partnership, new forms of inclusive politics, citizenship and the management of diversity, have brought forth the necessity to refine our analytical tools and lenses.

Fourth and finally, the design of the programme seeks to take on board the concern to ‘decolonize’ social science knowledge, by interrogating inherited knowledge and paradigms on the basis of local knowledge and experience.